My mother, Agnes Catherine Plumbe (1876 – 1954) was @ +der oldest the ten children. She/it was called Agnes after Dickens's heroine, because their father read David Copperfield aloud to their mother formerly during them/it/her on you waited, born to be.
As a child she/it was a mixture of the clever bookworm and the tomboy. She/it liked reading over all things. As soon as if she/it was a very small girl, she/it was scolded, because she/it maintained a small guest through giving of her a book, to read and then stepping back in a corner with @ +ein itself. As she/it increased old and showed itself, to be "welfare with babies" , she/it became over – also much, perhaps – to help with the sisters and brothers called, as they kept on arriving. In later life she/it expressed a resentment, which the younger member of the family, especially Gwyneth, so much fewer responsibility and so much more joke had. There was appropriate domestic help, however, in the large household, and I think sometimes, that mother on itself brought the care of the infants simply through being so lovingly from babies.
It was recognized by the time, which reached them/it/her their teenagers @ +der them/it/her academically was bent, and their parents sympathized with their wish, to go on to Cambridge, to desertion of school. She/it did not want to hear medicine study however their father would become of it; the idea of women doctors disgusted him/it. That was in the medium – ninety of the last century, if it was still only the relatively wealthy and courageous girls, who went to universities, and, if many Victorians fathers, who are felt, as my grandfather did around women in medicine.
So mother took a course in botany at Girton. This must have appeared a very second-best form of science, to study, and accounts for the fact, that she/it showed much interest in the object at later life rarely. I can remind myself their identifying roadside blooms for us children on country – ways, and she/it had some illustrated book of wild flowers beautifully, that she/it estimated – however scarce opened. The years at Cambridge were, nevertheless, happy ones for them/it/her with the manufacture of lifelong friendships:
Study and lightness mixed together: sweet conversation,
And innocence, @ +der best doth please, with
meditation.
Innocence indeed! Cocoa - Parties in college - rooms were allowed the extent of diversion my mother and their friends allowed themselves – or became by their superior – and they appeared satisfy completely, which should be it so.
In those days Oxford and Cambridge, at admitting of women to courses of study, did not give degrees on them. Mother passed the necessary tests for a degree however she/it was completely old, before the rules were changed and she/it was capable, to write B.A. (@@@@Cantab) after their name.